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In his fifth feature film, Cannes’ favourite enfant terrible Xavier Dolan drives a beat-up sedan to the edge of taste, finds it in a drab suburb, and high-gears it over a cliff. It’s a must-see.

The titular mommy is Die (Anne Dorval), a woman who must try to raise her troubled teenage son Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) after one particularly violent incident gets him booted from his youth residential facility. She struggles financially and emotionally to keep the two of them afloat, and to keep Steve’s aggression in check, for her sake and his own. They are soon joined by meek tutor Kyla (Suzanne Clement) from across the street. Die and Steve bring out both a ferocity and joyfulness in the haunted housewife, and all three primary performances — smouldering with pain and love — are phenomenal. The avenues of friendship Dolan and his players explore through this threesome are deeply felt, particularly in demonstrating a vital bond between two women in their mid-40s.

Dolan is obsessed with signifiers of ill-taste, his camera and soundtrack lingering on telltale shibboleths, from rhinestone-studded jeans to the mother of schmaltz, Celine Dion. It would all come across as classist bullying if Dolan didn’t allow for these pop artifacts to open up avenues to transcendence, particularly in a 4-minute sequence set to Wonderwall — a cliche, reclaimed — where the film’s claustrophobic 1:1 ratio is physically pushed open by Steve to reveal to us a brief glimpse at a universe with possibilities for real happiness. It cannot last, though, and Mommy is as emotionally challenging as any film this year. Bring your earmuffs if you can’t handle Lana Del Rey, shouting, or Quebecois swearing. Tabarnak!